Known processes for making fluoropolymers by an emulsion process commonly use perfluorinated or highly fluorinated surfactants to stabilize the emulsion during the reaction. For example, perfluorocarboxylate salts are used to stabilize fluoropolymer emulsion polymerizations, with the most common example being ammonium perfluorooctanoate. The high degree of fluorination of such surfactants avoids atom transfer between a growing polymer chain and the surfactant during polymerization, which would result in lowered molecular weights in the product and likely inhibition of the reaction. The fluorosurfactants are expensive, specialized materials, however, and because of their high stability, they tend to persist in the environment. A process which uses a nonfluorinated surfactant to make fluoropolymers would therefore be advantageous. While nonfluorinated surfactants have been used in the art to carry out emulsion polymerization of other monomers, they have been rarely used in fluoropolymer synthesis due to the problems cited above.